It's time to put on the brakes [LWN.net]

It's time to put on the brakes

Posted Nov 17, 2014 15:26 UTC (Mon) by Thue (guest, #14277)
In reply to: It's time to put on the brakes by BrucePerens
Parent article: Fog Heen: Resigning as a Debian systemd maintainer

> Let's face it, folks. When a single little project develops personal problems on multiple fronts, it's not the kernel team or Debian's fault. It's not a technical issue. It's the way that Systemd has been pushed upon all of us.

systemd was adopted voluntarily by the Debian TC. From my understanding, there never were a Debian General Resolution to overturn the TC decision about which init should be default because everybody knew systemd would win. Otherwise you can be sure that Ian would have made one. Also remember that all TC memebers, including Ian, preferred systemd over sysvinit (ignoring Ian's acknowledged insincere tactical voting).

Sure, some people disagree strongly with the switch. But when the switch is a result of a majority decision (or at least 50% in the case of the TC), then it is hardly "pushed upon all of us". At least those that voted for it doesn't feel it is pushed upon them.

Also as I understand it, sysvinit still works perfectly well on Debian, and the only reason why it should stop working is if sysvinit supporters do not put in the effort to maintain it.

> Oh, by the way, my Haswell system doesn't work with Debian Jessie at all, and it's a Systemd issue.

When you switch out the guts of an operating system, there will be bugs. Hopefully those bugs will be fixed.

As mentioned, you can still switch back to sysvinit.

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It's time to put on the brakes

Posted Nov 17, 2014 15:34 UTC (Mon) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link] (4 responses)

> As mentioned, you can still switch back to sysvinit.

I think a better option would be to allow the user to select an init system from the installer. This would probably greatly reduce the level of acrimony, and reduce the motivation to fork.

It's time to put on the brakes

Posted Nov 18, 2014 13:21 UTC (Tue) by obi (guest, #5784) [Link] (3 responses)

At this point, I'd like to see a fork: at least the anti-systemd crowd would then put in the work to make Gnome and other things work on non-systemd. And just maybe it'd act as a pressure release valve for all the bitterness we've seen for the last few years on the Debian ML.

But if I'm honest, I doubt a fork will happen. It's quite telling that most of the people actively doing the work seem to have no compunctions about working with systemd.

It's time to put on the brakes

Posted Nov 18, 2014 14:11 UTC (Tue) by Zack (guest, #37335) [Link] (1 responses)

Talking of forks and forking is silly in the Debian context. There would be a Debian Blend at most.

The question here is, how willing are systemd proponents (since they are the default init) to accommodate users who do not want to have systemd installed for whatever reason? If the majority is more than willing to acknowledge the need of some for a systemd free OS, there is no problem at all.
If the majority is unwilling to do put some sort of guarantee in place, there might be a need to create a blend which will probably consist of a modified installer, and a handful of packages, but will remain as close as possible to Debian the main project.

There is no major schism on the horizon here. Just a minor one where Debian at large can decide to continue as one whole project, or most-of-the-project-and-then-a-little, possibly at the cost of losing the "Universal OS" moniker.

It's time to put on the brakes

Posted Nov 18, 2014 15:09 UTC (Tue) by obi (guest, #5784) [Link]

I agree on your point that talking about forks (wrt Debian) is a bit silly, and that if one would diverge a bit a blend would be the way to go.

I may be wrong, but you seem to imply that the systemd side should accommodate users who want to avoid systemd; I respectfully disagree - it's up to those users to work with upstreams (like Gnome) and packaging teams to provide patches and implement the things that are needed (alternative logind f.e.). If they did, I doubt we'd even need a blend. IMHO the question is "who should do the work", not "will the work be accepted".

It's time to put on the brakes

Posted Nov 18, 2014 16:01 UTC (Tue) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

> At this point, I'd like to see a fork: at least the anti-systemd crowd would then put in the work to make Gnome and other things work on non-systemd.

I'd rather not see a fork. Splitting an already small community does not seem like a good idea, especially over something that can be fixed by a few packages and a modified installer. But if there is a fork, I wouldn't expect things like Gnome to be a problem, since there are alternatives.